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Play occupation has been identified as an essential part of children’s lives, and it subsequently features in paediatric occupational therapy. However, few studies address the current place of play and play occupation in occupational therapy practice. This study aims to address this gap in knowledge by exploring paediatric occupational therapists’ perspectives on the place of play and play occupation in occupational therapy practice in Ireland.

A cross-sectional online survey was conducted to gather data about the current use of play in the occupational therapy for children under 12 years. Convenience sampling and snowball recruitment techniques were used to recruit paediatric occupational therapists. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis.

In total, 65 therapists responded to the survey (estimated response rate, 32%). Results are organised into four sections: demographics and practice context, play assessment practices, use of play in practice and perceived barriers to play-centred practice. Respondents reported that they valued play as a childhood occupation. However, the survey findings identified that the primary focus was on play as a means to an end. Lack of education on play (research, theory and interventions) and pressures in the workplace have been identified as barriers to play-centred practice.

Findings indicate that there is a mismatch between therapists valuing play as an occupation and how play is used in occupational therapy practice. Unless clarifications are made about play occupation as being different to skills acquisition in childhood, play occupation will continue to get overlooked as an authentic concern of occupation-centred practice. Thus, play as occupation deserves further attention from educators, researchers and practitioners as a means of strengthening occupation-centred practice, in particular play-centred practice in the paediatric context.

Play has been described as an important occupation in childhood, and consequently, it features in paediatric occupational therapy. However, little is known about the current place of play in occupational therapy practice. This study addresses this gap by considering the current place of play in occupational therapy practice in Ireland.

This study aims to weave together narrative analysis (hereinafter NA) and Actor-Network Theory (hereinafter ANT), in order to address recent calls for performative studies to combine approaches and specifically to use ANT. Particularly, they address how a conflicting narrative is mobilised through a network of internal–external and human–nonhuman actors.

A fragment of data, generated from a longitudinal case study, is explored using NA and ANT in combination.

By engaging with ANT’s rejection of dualisms (i.e. human–nonhuman and micro–macro) and its approach to relationality, the authors inform NA and performative studies. They also add to the limited literature addressing how conflicting antenarratives are mobilised and shape the organisation’s trajectory.

Generalizing from a single case study is problematic, although transferability is possible. Generalisability could be achievable through multiple performative studies.

By demonstrating how counter networks form and antenarrative is constructed to supplant hegemonic narrative, the authors are able to problematise the taken for granted and highlight the possibilities offered by divergent voices.

The performation provides a deeper understanding of organisational performance through our NA-ANT combination, and the authors provide insight into the mobilisation of conflicting narratives in organisation studies.

Some dial‐access users have encountered the message “function disabled” which sounds alarming. This is a CompuServe message that occurs when the system receives a stray 〈DISP RECRD SEND〉 with nothing (or without anything the system recognized) preceding it. A lone 〈DISP RECRD SEND〉 was supposed to allow OCLC staff to go into a master mode for system maintenance. This master mode has not been installed and therefore is “disabled.”

Describes the findings from the first year of an evaluation of change at a PMS+ site in West Cumbria. The study has used qualitative methods including non‐participant observation at the site; face to face interviews with 28 clinical staff; group interviews with administrative and secretarial staff; and the collection of documents. Analysis of the data against a set of “outcome indicators” shows that significant progress has been made towards implementing the model of primary care delivery described in the pilot proposal. Multidisciplinary working is developing in the clinical action groups and the establishment of a primary care emergency unit has changed general practitioner workloads. The new organisation structure is not yet working wholly as anticipated but recently initiated changes are intended to strengthen the role and authority of the management board.

Professional careers have become more precarious in recent decades. Corporations today engage in downsizing even during profitable times, a practice that impacts workers throughout the labor force, including those with advanced degrees. Using a case study of women geoscientists in the oil and gas industry, I investigate how the increasing precariousness of professional careers reinforces gender inequality. The compressed cycle of booms and busts in the oil and gas industry permits an investigation into how women fare in precarious professional jobs. Extending gendered organization theory, I argue that three mechanisms are built into professional careers today that enhance women’s vulnerability to layoffs: teamwork, career maps, and networking. I illustrate how these mechanisms disadvantage women with in-depth portraits of three geoscientists who lost their jobs during the recent downturn in oil prices. Their personal narratives, collected over a 3-year period of boom and bust, reveal how a particular multinational corporation is structured in ways that favor the white men who dominate their industry. The rhetoric of diversity obscures the workings of gendered organizations during good times, but when times get tough, management’s decisions about whom to lay off belies the routine practices the reproduce men’s advantages within the industry.

Derek Parfit’s non-identity problem calls into question the claims of both the state and individuals when they purport to act for the benefit of future children. This paper discusses how adoption of the non-identity argument as a legal argument could affect reproductive and family policy, demonstrating that it undermines the child-centric approach to assigning legal parentage. The paper concludes, however, that these non-identity problems can be solved by the expected value approach, which demonstrates that efforts to benefit future people can be logically coherent even if those efforts also affect the genetic identities of the future people.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a new perspective on entrepreneurial identity as a narrative construction, emerging in stories about entering the family business.

The qualitative methodological approach involves an interpretative analysis of transcribed interviews conducted in narrative style with 12 women from Swedish family businesses.

By presenting entrepreneurial identity as a combination of two distinct narratives, the “passive” entrance into the family business is highlighted. The “Pippi Longstocking” narrative illustrates conscious choices, drive and motivation based on an entrepreneurial identification: the proactive plot. The “Alice in Wonderland” narrative on the other hand, illustrates women who happen to become entrepreneurs or business persons because the family business was there: the reactive plot. The contrasting and complementing narratives illustrate ambiguities in the identity process.

The authors identified the following opportunities for women in family business: the family business can offer easy access to a career and on‐the‐job learning opportunities; education in other areas can be useful when learning how to manage and develop the family business; and the family business offers a generous arena for pursuing a career at different life stages. Implications for education as well as for policy makers are also presented.

The narratives presented are given metaphorical names with the intention to evoke the reader's reflection and reasoning by analogy, which can lead to new insights. The use of metaphors illustrates multiple layers and ambiguities in identity construction. Metaphors can also create awareness of the researcher as a co‐creator of knowledge.

This chapter reviews the underlying technologies of cryptoassets, including fundamental cryptographic primitives used in distributed ledger technologies and permissionless blockchain technologies and their consensus protocols such as proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. It discusses the pros and cons of existing approaches to improve blockchain scalability and considers the requirements for security and decentralization. The chapter also examines the following techniques: layer 1 tuning, layer 1 sharding, and layer 2 solutions. It concludes with an overview of technologies to swap cryptoassets off-chain, technical requirements for cross-chain transactions, and reviews cross-chain atomic swap implementation using hashed time lock contracts.

This book was first commissioned as Report 5876 to the British Library Research and Development Department. It records the input of funds to public libraries from external sources during 1984/85, charting as it goes the providing agencies and the impact of the funding upon the services receiving it. I had better say at once that I was one of the librarians interviewed by Nick Moore in the course of his research for the report, and that he was kind enough to show me a draft before it achieved its present status.